1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method, and a program product for secure data formatting and retrieving and a transportable data recording medium storing the program product, and more particularly to an apparatus, a method, and a program product for secure data formatting and retrieving and a transportable data recording medium storing the program product by arranging a read only area and a recordable area.
2. Discussion of the Background
As both an infrastructure and techniques for networking have rapidly developed in recent years, usage of networks to carry out transmission of digital data has become common. Typical examples are sending e-mail, downloading of digital data from a web site, and sharing of digital data in a local area network, for example.
On the other hand, however, security issues with respect to the digital data has not solved yet, such as information leakage via networks, invasion by virus, and so on. Accordingly, a data transportable medium effective in an offline mode still has an important role. In particular, CD-ROMs including a CD-R and a CD-RW are useful since nearly every personal computer is equipped with an optical disc drive apparatus.
As one variation of the CD-ROM, a hybrid CD-RW has recently been developed, in which a read only area coexists with a recordable area.
It should be aware that even the above-mentioned offline transportable data medium is not perfect from a security view point. For example, the offline medium always has a risk of loss, an illegal usage when it is rent, etc. That is, since the transportability is a nature of the offline medium, it has a risk of information leakage and invasion by virus, just as is facing on the networks, when being away from the user.
Accordingly, protection of digital data recorded on the CD-ROM becomes important, and conventional techniques of an anti-copy and a data encryption are adopted for such purposes. However, these conventional techniques are already-produced tools and users need to develop own techniques to fit them into user's application, which is not an easy task for the users.